The Constitutional & Mainland Affairs Bureau is very concerned the Registration & Electoral Office has not recovered a Register of Electors for the 2016 Legislative Council General Election.

The office is searching for the Register of Electors of a polling station in Kwai Tsing.

The register contains information, including the names, genders, addresses and identity card numbers of about 8,000 electors.

The bureau asked the office to complete the verification and search within one week and give a full account of the findings immediately afterwards.

It instructed the office to notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data of the incident, and to confirm that should the loss of the register be ascertained, action would be taken to notify affected electors and to mitigate any possible damage.

The office said there has been no information so far showing any leakage of the relevant information and apologised for the distress to electors caused by the incident.

The Electoral Affairs Commission also expressed concern over the incident and instructed the office to confirm as soon as possible whether that register is missing.

It asked the office to launch a comprehensive review on the handling of voter registration information, electoral materials during election and the actual execution. 

According to the Electoral Affairs Commission (Electoral Procedure) (Legislative Council) Regulation, election documents must be retained for at least six months from the date of an election.

The documents must be destroyed afterwards, unless directed by a court order relating to an election petition or criminal proceedings.

The Registers of Electors for the 2016 Legislative Council General Election have been kept for the ongoing investigation, while ballot papers of that election have been destroyed in accordance with the law.